Kathleen Hanna

The feminist punk icon talks with Jenn Pelly about the music of her life: learning how to sing from Donny Osmond, starring in a high-school version of the play Annie, admiring Public Enemy's politics, looking up to Grimes, and more.

I remember every single note of "Heartbeat, It's a Lovebeat" by Tony DeFranco and the DeFranco Family. Tony was this little boy and he was so dreamy. He was basically a ripoff of Frankie Lymon, who I loved too. But my absolute favorite record was Donny Osmond's "Sweet and Innocent". He sang a lot of old 1950s songs, which I found myself very attracted to. I used to sit in my room and sing along with them, making up dances for hours and hours. That's how I learned to sing.

The Donny Osmond stuff started with "Donny & Marie", the TV show—I would flip the fuck out watching it. If our parents took us out for dinner when it was on, I would be like, "We have to go!" I would be so mad if I didn't get to see the beginning. I used to write Marie letters all the time. I read one magazine that said, "Marie showed up for her interview and had a bit of a cold," so I went to the store and was like, "Can I buy this card for Marie?" And then I sent her a card. My first concert was the Osmonds, when I was six. I screamed so hard that I had laryngitis. It was the first time I lost my voice.

Both Tony DeFranco and Donny Osmond had these really high-pitched voices, and that's what I wanted to do. But I'm an alto, not a tenor, so I had to train myself. When I listen to [Le Tigre's] "Deceptacon", I don't even recognize my voice because it's typically deeper than that. It sounds so swirly and high on that song—how was I even singing that high? But that's what I've always aspired to. I grew up in an era with things like the Jacksons, of course, so I love pop music and that pop pitch.

Various Artists: Annie (Original Broadway Cast Recording)

I was listening to Helen Reddy a lot and I made up a dance to "I Am Woman" for school—we acted out every part of the song for the talent show. That's probably the better one to say, but at 10 it was undeniably all about the Broadway version of Annie. My dad took me to see the play Annie in D.C., and I really enjoyed it, but I was depressed because it wasn't Andrea McArdle in the lead role. I think it was Sarah Jessica Parker.

I used to sing at home, but I never knew I could sing. The first time I learned I could sing was when I was nine. My best friend wanted to try out for Annie, so she took me to the audition. The teacher was like, "OK, you're next." And I was like, "No, no. I'm just here with my friend." And she was like, "You're next." So I got up and sang "Tomorrow" and I got the part as Annie. My friend was supportive, which was really nice.

In the middle of doing the play, the school realized there were not enough parts for boys, so the music head changed it to Annie-Oliver: They mixed the play Annie with the play Oliver. It was a total mess—a song from Annie, and then a song from Oliver—so it was like, "What is going on in this play?" I hated the boy who played Oliver because I was like, "You took away my thunder!" [laughs]

Doing that play, I learned a big lesson that I've carried ever since. I listened to the soundtrack so much, so I was like, "Oh, I know all the songs." Then, at the talent show, I did "I Don't Need Anything But You", which is sung by Annie and Warbucks. I sang both parts; I would stand in one place, and then stand in the next, and I had two mics. Ms. Matthews, the play teacher, was on the side, moving her lips to the first verse. I was watching her mouth, but she didn't know more than the first verse. So, for the second verse, she started mouthing the first verse again. I started singing the first verse over and over, and then I started crying because I messed up and I ran off stage. I hid backstage and I wouldn't come out to go to class. I was so humiliated in front of the whole school.

Backstage, it was just me and the kid whose job it was to open and close the curtains. He was like, "You should be happy, you were Annie and people like you. I don't have any friends." That was my first big guilt trip. [laughs] I learned that, if you don't practice and get over-confident, you're going to fuck up. After that, I never did things unrehearsed. I was humbled.

The Itals: Give Me Power!

I would tape reggae off college radio stations and try to figure out who wrote the songs I liked. I never really bought records because I had these tapes. Eventually, I got Bob Marley's Legend and other classics.

I had Itals' Give Me Power!, because I saw them live and bought it at the show. But I didn't go to record stores. I didn't feel cool enough. When I was in middle school in Maryland, I lived in the suburbs and just listened to Southern rock like Lynyrd Skynyrd and Molly Hatchet. From sixth grade to eighth grade, I lived within one mile of Ian MacKaye, and I had no idea about any of that stuff. I was a couple of years younger than them, but still, I had no clue.

Around 15, I lived in Portland. I didn't know anything about punk, but I went to punk shows with my friends, and we would be the only girls there. The shows were all racist skinheads fighting straight-edge, anti-racist skinheads, and then the long-haired death metal boys came in. There was this tension between groups fighting all the time. So I started going to reggae shows where nobody was beating each other up. My friend Stacey took me to my first reggae show—probably on acid.

I used to run a lot—I was a runner in high school before I became a total stoner—and I started running again when I quit drinking, right when Bikini Kill started. Although I was a bit older than 20, I got It Takes a Nation of Millions to Hold Us Back on cassette when it first came out [in 1988]. So I used to run on off-days while on tour and listen to that exclusively. It was inspirational to hear something that sounded so good and was so political. [Public Enemy] put themselves out there to say something that hadn't been said before. I wanted to put myself out there because they did.

They were my friends. I listened to The Real Janelle a lot because of the production—it was produced much better than our records had been. There was one song called "And I Live in a Town Where the Boys Amputate Their Hearts" with these really good girl-group backups. The quality of sound was really influential for me. Bikini Kill had been like, "We're DIY! We don't care! We're recording on a shitty four-track!" I listened to Yeah Yeah Yeah Yeah and was embarrassed because it sounded like garbage. We wrote some pretty good songs on that record, but they were so much better live. We probably could have gotten an advance from a record label and recorded better. I wish we would have known. But we were just like, "We're more DIY than you!" I can't speak for everybody, but that's how I felt. Bratmobile was the first band known as riot grrrl who made a record that sounded really good.

They were a little bit younger than us. I remember they fooled Calvin Johnson, who runs K Records—they were like, "We're in a band called Bratmobile." And he was like, "Oh, you should play this show." And they were like, "Oh fuck, we don't really have a band," so they made up these songs. I saw them open for Tad, who was on Sub Pop and was very loud and aggressive, and people were stage-diving. They got up there, just the two of them, Molly and Allison, and were singing, "You're too cosy in your all boy clubhouse!" I literally heard a guy in the audience say, "Someone should kill them." At that time, Bratmobile was like the most crazy performance art you've ever seen. It was so insane. It was literally child rhymes. And they were so feminine in their presentation. I always felt like our band was much more aggressive. But to be that girly, opening for Tad, it was such a relief.

This was when I actually started shopping for records. I had just met [Beastie Boys'] Mike Diamond two years before, and we started record shopping together. I had lived in Portland for years, and there was this record store there that was this huge warehouse. Nothing was organized and everything was $5 and they had incredible records. I took him there and his mind was totally blown. That's where I bought this live album.

I would talk between songs when Bikini Kill played, and be like, "This song is about guys who think they're more feminist than you, and you start hating them, and they tell you that your feminism is totally wrong," and people would yell "shut up." Isaac Hayes would talk in between songs, too. He did the song "Use Me" and was like, "My brother was dating this girl and she didn't really care about him, she was just coming over to have sex, and I said, 'Look, you gotta get away from her, she's using you.'"

I thought, "How come he deserves this, and I don't feel like I do? Someday, I want to give myself the present of having a full band fill out my songs, and to talk about what each one is about, or tell funny stories." Then I got into a band [Le Tigre] with two people who didn't know how to play any instruments. [laughs] And neither did I.

I got back into [Kim Gordon's band] Free Kitten. They are so fucked up, they sound like they're having fun, and they're feminists. But I feel like nobody ever talks about them as a band, I guess because they hadn't played many shows or toured. Their first record came out when I was like 26, and I was like like, "What the hell!" I didn't know that their song "Teenie Weenie Boppie" was a Serge Gainsbourg cover, so I started listening to a lot of old French stuff, like Bridget Bardot.

I listen to Sentimental Education the most. I didn't discover it when I was 35, but it was something I started listening to over and over then. I was wondering, "What do I want my next band to sound like?" And those questions made me think about being able to write whatever I wanted—not knowing what a song was going to sound like until I started screaming it. Sometimes Kim wouldn't know the lyrics until she started singing. When I was in Bikini Kill, I had stayed at her apartment, and she was listening to an instrumental of some song and writing down lyrics, just listening to it over and over and refining them. I thought, "What a great working process!" I started doing that. When we were on tour with Huggy Bear, we had to record a song called “Demirep”, and I had just been singing random lyrics. We were recording the next day, and I hadn’t nailed them down. So I sat in a coffee shop and did what I thought Kim Gordon would do. [laughs]

I was dealing with a serious illness around this time so I related to his lyrics and to the sadness in his voice. The feeling of having something precious and losing it and maybe never getting it back—of remembering who you used to be and may never be again. I found a friend in these songs, a poet made to feel lonely and isolated by an illness not many understand. I heard the feeling of being a dependent when that is not your true nature or spirit, and the frustration and longing that brings. I was able to see Vic live at Bowery Ballroom before he chose to leave this world and will always cherish the memory. I was jealous he was working with so many great musicians and it inspired me to do the same.

I so admire Grimes. The first time I clicked onto her music, I was like, “Oh my god, what the fuck,” and then I started clicking more links and watching more videos. I really want to see her live. I'm probably around 20 years older than her, and it's cool to have someone so much younger than me who, in a way, I look up to. The fact that she produces her own music and is proud of it is really cool. I'm glad she calls herself a feminist. I remember reading something where she wrote, "Just because I make music doesn’t give you the right to touch me." With Le Tigre, we considered ourselves a feminist punk band, and we really wanted one of those dividers at the record store—that said "Classic Rock" or "Punk" or whatever—to say "Feminist Electronic Punk." It would be like us and Peaches. Now Grimes would be there.

I didn’t read that much about her beforehand. I had a theory that there was probably a lot of negative stuff, and I can't take that. I read some of the worst shit I’ve ever read in my life about Vivian Girls on BrooklynVegan. I clicked on a link because I wanted to see a show, and I made the mistake of reading the comments, and it made me want to cry. It was like the 90s all over again. But people in the 90s had to take out a piece of paper and write you a letter. It's taken me a long time to not take that stuff seriously. I feel like people who are younger than me understand better. When Le Tigre started, people felt like they had to respond if someone said something negative about you online. As a political musician you felt obligated to have a dialogue. Now I realize.